John
If you tend to Google hints on how to complete games, op011 is not for you. If you’re ready for a real challenge, read on.
op011.com is a game. The website even says so. When I stumbled upon it, I thought it was a load of crap. I pressed a variety of keys and clicked random points on the screen and, nothing. I decided it must be broken.
A few hours later, I decided to Google, just to see if anyone else had found the website and…well, it turns out op011 isn’t broken; it is a game, and it’s one that will test your patience and intelligence, in equal measure.
This thread on Reddit shows how quickly the site is catching on. To solve the first clue, you simply click on the full-stop (WARNING: I’d recommend avoiding this if you have epilepsy – what comes next is a bit of a light show).
The flashing screen may not mean much, but savvy Redditor dragon_dagger converted the flashing into binary by using black frames as 0 and white frames as 1. This gave the following binary string:
0010111100111001011010000110000100111000011011100011010101111001011000110110100101101101011001010111001100110000011100100111100001110110
They converted that into text (Google binary to text), giving them /9ha8n5ycimes0rxv. By appending the decoded string to the url they ended up at http://op011.com/9ha8n5ycimes0rxv/. And, the second clue.
Reddit continues to try to solve the game:
It reminds me very much of the novel Ready Player One, where protagonist Wade Watts searches for an easter egg in a virtual reality game; the discovery of which will lead him to inherit a valuable fortune in a world torn by an energy crisis.
I’ll hold my hand up and admit, I’m nowhere near smart enough to solve these riddles and codes, but the concept is pretty darn cool.
